Mar 21, 2016

In this "news piece" Glenn Beck takes shots of peaceful protests and one individual picking on another individual and compares it to tear gas riots with cops from 1968. There was no tear gas or even a huge police response to the events Beck compares them too. How he gets away with this stuff literally amazes me everytime I turn my attention towards him.

On his radio show Thursday, Glenn talked about when he first started predicting a repeat of the year 1968. Well, we dug through the GlennBeck.com archives and found several articles dating back as far as 2012 with Glenn warning about a repeat of 1968. Unless We Act We Will Not Survive Another Summer of ’68 WATCH – It’s Not About Race, It’s About Hate Glenn’s Prediction for 2016: ‘You Can Write This on Your calendar’ Up until recently, nobody seemed to agree with Glenn, but now, it looks like the mainstream media is finally catching up.

Here Beck is just talking about one of his fear generating tactics and calling it a prediction. He does this all the time. I made a small list:

Below are two videos showing violent protests — one from a recent Donald Trump rally that was cancelled due to violent protests. The other is from 1968. Watch them together — the feelings of anger and hatred are palpable in both.

OK. Here is the actual rally - all you see is a few individuals getting angry at each other. You see alot more of this on twitter without the physical presence. (The riots Beck compares them to in the next video are so out of context to be actually funny but I don't think Beck is trying to be funny, I think he's serious about his bullshit comparison). The feelings of anger of a person verses the feelings of anger from a huge crowd fighting cops who are fighting back with tear gas

NOTICE THE LACK OF TEAR GAS OR RUNNING CROWDS LIKE IN THE FIRST VIDEO THAT GLENN BECK THINKS THIS LOOKS LIKE (IT'S NOT EVEN A GOOD CON)

Comparing a chick with an eagle and calling them both birds can be done but it does injustice to both.

OK, he is artful with his con as he tries to say the feelings of 'fear and anger are palpable in both'. Sure you could put up a kids baseball game & compare it to the final game of the world series and say 'hey! the feelings of stress and excitement are palpable in both' and you would be right to some extent but it is still an absurd comparison. That is exactly what you see here (don't worry Beck, I'll be going backwards through your "news" to make sure I'm being fair).

This tactic also gets used in mainstream media (GOP seems to own most of it so the tactic makes sense). This one was caught by Jon Stewart (Making an event seem bad by leaving out the accurate historical context and replacing it with an inaccurate context);

Baltimore on Fire-Violent anti-police protests erupt in Baltimore, which blindside the media and CNN's Wolf Blitzer, despite the U.S.'s long history of racially charged riots. (8:04)

Jon Stewart starts off with a comparison between how white people riots vs black people riots/protests are presented by the media (& thus represents public consciousness on issues);

Jon Stewart summarizes the situation;

Then Jon Stewart takes a look at how Wolf Blitzer seems to forget all of history and knowledge and speak as if he was some bystander on the street who just got let out of ballet school, i.e. completely flabbergasted;

In any case, what CNN did here is what Glenn Beck did above, i.e. take something out of context to give a bad impression. Except what CNN did is a more standard tactic that GOP/FoxNews tend to use (& Glenn Beck often participates in) such as the Trayvon Martin atrocity.

Quotes

"Make peace with the universe. Take joy in it. It will turn to gold. Resurrection will be now. Every moment, a new beauty." - Rumi

"God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that." - Joseph Campbell

"Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - Carl Jung

"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society." - George Washington

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.” - Dalai Lama

“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison. When the door is so wide open?” ― Rumi